Homeland Earth : A Manifesto for the New Millennium (Advances in Systems Theory, Complexity and the Human Sciences)

This is a must read for anyone interested in humanity's future. In Homeland Earth French visionary Edgar Morin lays out a thoroughly considered and truly needed manifesto for our times—crucial to our survival—but beyond that, for our quality of life experience on individual and collective scales. He calls for the emergence of a planetary cosmopolitanism: meaning that humanity evolves to form an Earth civilization capable of embracing both unity and complexity, resisting the temptation to rationalize what he calls “barbarism” which tends to loom in some way whenever a civilization is born. Our particular civilizational barbarism is born of oppositional thinking and technocratic rule. He calls for multidimensional and anthropological history, science, and politics to replace our current technocratic and econo-cratic systems that attempt to reduce the complexity of humanity, and cannot adequately deal with the preturbations and complex processes of living, self-organizing systems. Our current paradigm, lacking the ability to deal with complexity, has brought us to a major planetary crisis of many layers.Morin describes the ominous indicators that we are in planetary crisis, or “polycrisis:”1. Mounting uncertainties in all domains, the impossibility of any assured futurology, the extreme diversity of possible future scenarios.2. The rupture of regulating factors (including the ruptue of the balance of terror); the development of rising positive feedback, as in population growth; the uncontrolled developments of industrial growth and technoscience.3. Deadly perils facing the whole of humanity (nuclear arms, threat to biosphere) and the opportunity to save humanity from these perils, starting witht the consciousness of these perils.Other indicators are the acceleration of change (runaway positive feedback), deadly global threats (what he calls the “Damoclean spectre”), Alliance of barbarisms, serious life and death struggles, and deadly global threats.Our world undeniably fits his description of a polycrisis. So in the face of this seemingly insurmountable, multilayered crisis, how can we possibly be thinking about our future? It seems that our once-promised utopia through the benefits of science and capitalism was a mirage. Morin points toward our ambivalence toward technocracy as one of the key reasons we lost our future-orientation. All of our visions of the future were aligned with progress, and human salvation by technology and economics. However, in the mid twentieth century, we realized that technology had not only the power to ameliorate but annihilate. We realized our technocracy could not provide a certain utopia. We also realized that economics has its inevitable shadow side, that it fails to consider humanity. Morin calls this a “crisis of the future.” He proposes that our future should be connected to the past and present, and founded upon the ability to think critically, become self-aware, and contextualize our actions in the larger planetary picture, rather than weighted toward linear progress and the false rationality of technocracy, economics, and our current politics. He considers it crucial that we begin to think in terms of metatechnology; meaning that we put our well-being and development of consciousness before blindly innovating into the abyss. In other words, he suggests that human development come before technological development, but that human development hinges upon planetary health. “Two apparently antagonistic goals should henceforth be inseparably linked: first, the survival of humanity, and second, ongoing hominization.” (p. 79) The Homeland Earth must sustain human life if humanity is to evolve and become responsible citizens that recognize unity and embrace diversity.This book makes crucial points about where our paradigm has failed, and how we must revise our approach to development toward “metadevelopment.” Our politics and technology must become humane and oriented towards our unified fundamental need to share our home in the cosmos. He points out that we have a rare opportunity now, to combine our cosmological stories, to contextualize our human story, and to imagine our uncertain future through complex thought and strategy. Homeland Earth provides a conceptual place from which to dream, to inquire, and to evolve into a better future.

Morin has published tons of books and other texts for decades, but sadly I know of only three of them that has been translated into English. This is only recently been done, so we might hope for more of this to come. I have already read the two other books in English, On Complexity - which I really liked, and the fragmented California Journal - which also gave me some valuable afterthoughts. Before I started on Homeland Earth, I prepared myself by reading some other books referenced in On Complexity (such as books in system theory, information theory, and cybernetics).Sadly to say, I immediately got very disappointed. The introduction and more, about 40 pages, were really, really bad. I cannot understand why he choose to present it the way he did. It is unnecessary rich in details, and it is a very typical way of showing our history. No interesting or new angles on the material. The emphasis on details just created the illusion of him showing off, proudly presenting all his knowledge of historical facts to the reader. In my view, it did not serve any purpose. Besides, these lead to a simplified view of our history, with very linear and single cause and effect scenarios, which is then vulnerable to errata when the historians dig deeper into our historical past. This trigger a physiological negativity in me, trying to find such errors, rather than focusing on his real ideas and the book as a whole. One of probably many such errors were when he says that America was named after Amerigo Vespucci. Hardcore QI fans know that this is highly unlikely, and America is instead probably named after the Welshman Richard Amerike. Another "fact" he states is in explaining the butterfly effect where "the beating of a butterfly's wings in Australia can trigger a tornado in New York". The man behind the original butterfly statement, Lorenz, explains himself that such local fluctuations seldom influences the higher weather patterns, and in any case Australia and New York (or in the original statement: Brazil and Texas) are on different hemispheres and thus will not be affected by the opposite hemisphere. All this could be avoided by presenting the material in more general terms. As a matter of fact, in chapter 5, he talks about this illusion of reality where we are unable to know anything for sure. Human beings are only capable of (mis)interpret the world based on partial and fragmental input, processed by our irrational minds. It beats me why he then makes the same mistakes in the early chapters of this book.Morin seems to be very keen in showing the paradox of combining and embracing opposite values and contradictory views. Again and again he writes about it repeatedly. Almost like an obsession, and not because it is really needed in the text. Furthermore, in the first half of the book, he does a poor job in justifying his arguments, and backing up his premature conclusions. It is a short book alright, but maybe it is too short for this topic. The goals which he and hopefully we aim at, are too vaguely explained philosophically.I get the impression that Morin uses a language which could have been simplified without being detached from its meaning and rich details. It is not well written. The paragraphs are unnecessary complicated without really saying much. Is it perhaps a problem in translation? It does not seem to be. The other translated books, translated by other people, give the same impression. The use of multiple words in combination, and newly invented words, are tiresome when it is done all too often. I guess he is a much better thinker than author.The book is presumably a widely hailed masterpiece (from French speaking countries), and the only two reviews in Amazon gives it top grades and is impressed with how good it is. After the first half of the book, I really could not understand why. Then slowly, something happens. It just got better, much better. Each chapter, from the fifth and onwards, were better than the previous one. The latter half deserves a totally different review, none of the previous critic apply anymore. It slowly but surely turned into a good read. The content was superb. Morin discusses just about every concept I have been interested in the recent years, and binds them together: The need for religion, various belief systems, complexity, non-linear and circular cause-and-effects, system thinking, holistic views, uncertainty, compartmentalization of science, knowledge, and experts in various professions; embracing context, dualism - the combination of prose and poems - our left and right brain hemispheres if you like, imperfection, irrationality, the failures of mathematical models of economy, what is realism; and open-ended goals. Brilliant!What a strange transformation of perception from a single and short book.

Morin is a must read - this is filled with insight.

Morin Is one of the special French intelligentsia, a brilliant thinker about the history, nature and sociology of science. More intelligently than almost any other, he has examined the requirements for an education that will equip people, all humanity, with the kind of emotionally mature multidimensional thinking required for dealing with the challenges facing us going forward on our planet, Homeland Earth. He calls this 'complex thinking'. Another slim book, On Complexity, Is a tour de force explanation of his understanding of the complex nature of reality and what this means in terms of the need to think differently. Most people are aware that we have rather made a mess of the planet and its down not simply to our greed but to our inability to actually understand how the life sphere of the world, the biome and its ecologies, actually works, and this includes not only purely natural ecologies (not that there are many left) but also the human ecologies: cities, countries and the institutions that we design and run for their maintenance, including education.In this passionate and intelligent work, Morin provides a summary explanation of his ideas about science and complex thinking and goes on to explore the implications for education, making this the most important work for policymakers, educationalists and the intelligent ecological concerned reader.The book is beautifully introduced by Californian professor, Alfonso Montuori, who has done much to bring his works into English, for Morin is sadly unknown and relatively unrelated in the English-speaking world. Our loss